Archive for April, 2013

Ukip is no longer a single-issue party, it is widening its scope and enjoys the common touch with core voters that the main parties lack

Ukip is no longer a single-issue party, it is widening its scope and enjoys the common touch with core voters that the main parties lack

Watching Nigel Farage speaking to a full room felt like the party conference in the days when grassroots members actually turned up
No one much cared what Nigel Farage had to say about Margaret Thatcher. The verdicts of everyone from Nick Clegg to Gerry Adams were being relayed, but broadcasters were not keen on the views of the chap with the funny hat and the comic expressions. Ukip is still seen in Westminster as a freakish single-issue party with the intellectual clout of a mayfly and about the same life expectancy. It might flutter during the Government’s mid-term blues, but it is expected to perish in the next election as surely as the BNP did in the last one.
This was certainly my suspicion when I went along to Nigel Farage’s “Common Sense Tour” last week. I decided to sneak in at the back at Worcester Guildhall to test my theory that Ukip peaked in the Eastleigh by-election, is losing support and will flop in next month’s local elections. I expected to find a few dozen Eurosceptic pub bores huddled in the middle of a room, and wondered how Farage would speak to them when he didn’t think the press was listening. I also wondered how his audience would compare to those who used to attend BNP meetings.
I found my answer. Worcester Guildhall felt like the Tory party conference in the days when grassroots members actually turned up. There were young couples, families and a chap in his thirties who said he’d come because it would be “better than watching EastEnders”. Something about Ukip had pricked his interest, and he decided to attend a political meeting – an event that doesn’t happen much in Britain. I met two pearl-draped women who said they were Tory converts. Their complaint with David Cameron was “lack of progress” – any kind of progress.
No one seemed even to vaguely conform to the Prime Minister’s now infamous description of Ukip supporters as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”.
Half an hour before Farage was due to arrive, every seat was taken and an overflow room was being hurriedly assembled in the foyer, with chairs arranged around a loudspeaker. Twenty minutes later, all of these chairs were taken and the Guildhall ushers were worrying about whether the ancient floor could take the weight of the people. When Farage turned up, he decided to address the overflow room separately, speaking Evita-style from a balcony. “This is what the other parties don’t do,” he began. “Come and speak to the people.”

Farage has been trying to speak to the people for some time, but the people didn’t really want to listen. Four years ago, he called a meeting in Cornwall attended by only one person. In the same room last week it was standing-room only. He is taking full advantage of this: if anyone asks a half-decent question, Farage asks them to stand for election. There are 2,400 council seats up for grabs on May 2 and Ukip is fielding a record 1,700 candidates. It hopes to shine next month, actually win a by-election (maybe Portsmouth South), take gold in next year’s European elections and then storm Westminster in 2015.
Several upstart parties have indulged in such fantasies over the years, but it comes to naught because the Westminster political system protects incumbents against insurgents. This is why MPs tend to breathe easy. It may be hard to imagine Ed Miliband in a pub, but it’s also hard to imagine Farage out of one. Can he be taken seriously? When the BNP won almost a million votes in the last European elections, the rules were changed so MEPs were no longer given automatic access to the House of Commons. It’s a shame: having the odious Nick Griffin, an MEP for North West England, queuing behind MPs in the canteens and the bars would remind them all to do a better job with the voters they have neglected.
Much of the blame lies in an obsession with voting technology, which has now persuaded party leaders that they can win elections by targeting a fraction of the electorate. For example, Cameron would have had his majority if 8,800 voters – 0.02 per cent of the electorate – had voted another way. The next election can, in theory, be decided by 4 per cent of the voters in swing seats. Nowadays, our parties believe their computers know the names, addresses, concerns, assumptions and hairdressers of these people – and our politics is shaped accordingly. So elections are not so much a battle for Britain but for a tiny slice of its voters. You don’t mean a thing if your seat’s not a swing.
This is where Nigel Farage senses his opportunity. If the golden 4 per cent don’t like hearing about immigration, then all parties will keep quiet about it, even if it’s the issue that troubles voters the most, after the economy. This creates a gap which Ukip is now trying to fill. It’s considering changing its name, and ditching its pound sign logo to reflect its widening into what would, in effect, be a working-class party with two aims: small government and individual liberty. And if he is laughed at for crude language and basic arguments, then he’d argue he’s in good company: so was Mrs Thatcher, whose directness was appreciated by blue-collar workers.
A recent audit of Ukip’s support showed its supporters were more likely to be working class than those of any Westminster party. Farage talks (a lot) about immigration, but carefully. The religion or race of immigrants doesn’t matter, he said that night in Worcester, as long as they bring skills. They’re welcomed; that’s the British way. His riff is that it’s madness to allow unlimited unskilled immigration while so many of Britain’s young are unemployed. He invokes Europe, but only when it relates to problems felt by blue-collar workers: unemployment, housing and school places. He is trying to move Ukip’s politics away from the Rue de la Loi and towards Britain’s housing estates.
Several Conservatives can see what Farage is up to, and worry. At the “Victory 2015” conference in London last month, Tory MPs held a session on what to do about working-class voters who are giving up on the party. The concern is that Cameron’s idea of diversity is a greater variety of posh Londoners. This narrow social composition, runs the argument, can make the Tories sound like the party of the rich, downplaying basic issues like crime, housing and the cost of living. Issues that Mrs T understood instinctively.
Ed Miliband frets about poshness too, and recently demanded that social class be taken into account when his party selects MPs. Already, we’ve started to see ambitious politicians acquiring glottal stops and a Mockney twang. It won’t work, for the simple fact that British voters are not bigots. A Nottingham academic, Philip Cowley, recently published research into what voters want in an MP. On a scale of 0 to 10, they give “social class” an importance of 3.6. Most give zero to race, creed and sexual orientation. The number one concern of women voters was the same as that for gay voters, black voters and Muslim voters: an MP who shares their political views. It’s about what you say, not whether you say it in a fake Jamie Oliver accent.
This helps explain why Cameron’s pledge to hold a referendum on Europe did not worry, far less shoot, Ukip’s fox. Farage is extending his message beyond Brussels-bashing. Those expenses-fiddlers in Westminster don’t understand you, he says, not as Maggie once did. Or even Tony Blair. They won’t meet you, or listen to you. And if you’ve had enough, then vote Ukip: we’re on your side. It’s a message intended to be as effective in the town hall as it was in Eastleigh – the formula for Ukip’s transformation. In three weeks’ time, we’ll see if it works.

The 2013 County Council election candidates

The full list of UKIP candidates standing in Redditch for the Worcester County Council elections